THE SEA OF TIBERIAS, LOOKING TOWARDS BASHAN. 
This Lake bears also the name of the Sea of Galilee, from the province; of Tiberias, 
from the City; and of Gennesareth, from a tract of fertile land extending along its 
western shore, from El-Medjel on the south, to Khan Minyeh on the north; its 
length, according to Josephus, being thirty stadia, and its breadth twenty. It was 
remarkable for the abundance and excellence of its fruits, and was famed for a 
fertilising fountain, held by some to be a branch of the Nile, from its producing fish 
resembling the Coracinus, found in the lakes round Alexandria. The fountain was 
also called Capharnaum, probably from the town, 1 so often mentioned in Scripture 
as visited by our Lord. 
On the sight of this Lake, De Lamartine says, in language which, though ambitious 
and poetic, yet conveys the common feeling of mankind:—“I had come to worship 
on the very shores, on the very waves which had borne Him; on the hills where 
He had sat, on the stones on which He had rested His head. He had a hundred 
times walked on that beach which I now trod with reverential homage. His feet 
had trodden the dust which was now under my own. He sailed in the barks of 
the fishermen on the Sea of Galilee; He walked on its waves, stretching His hand 
to the Apostle.” 2 
The Artist thus gives his personal impression of the scene :—“ Passing through 
a beautiful country, in about five hours we came in sight of the Sea of Galilee, 
embosomed in surrounding hills; far on the left lay Mount Hermon, covered with 
snow; and on a nearer hill rests the City of Safed. Here, at a glance, lay before 
us the scenes of our Saviour’s miracles; but the population and the boats have 
disappeared. Towards the west the River Jordan was seen flowing from the Lake 
towards the Dead Sea, and below us lay the Town of Tiberias.” 3 
The author of the Biblical Researches thus describes the aspect of the Lake:— 
“We reached the brow of the height above Tiberias, where a view of nearly the 
whole Sea opened at once upon us. It was a moment of no little interest; for who 
can look without interest upon that Lake on whose shores our Saviour lived so 
long, and where He performed so many of His mighty works? Yet to me, I must 
confess, so long as we continued around the Lake, the attraction lay more in these 
associations than in the scenery itself. The Lake presents, indeed, a beautiful sheet 
of limpid water, in a deep, depressed basin, from which the shores rise, in general, 
steeply and continuously all around, except where a ravine, or sometimes a deep 
wady, occasionally interrupts them. The hills are rounded and tame, with little of 
the picturesque in their form; they are decked by no shrubs or forests, and even 
the verdure of the grass and herbage, which, earlier in the season, might have given 
them a pleasing aspect, was already gone; they were now only naked and dreary. 
One interesting object greeted our eyes,— a little boat with a white sail, gliding over 
the waters: the only one, as we afterwards found, upon the Lake. The form of 
its basin is not unlike an oval; but the regular and almost unbroken heights which 
enclose it bear no comparison to the vivid and powerful effects which the wild and stern 
1 Joseph. Bell. Jud. iii. 8. 2 Travels. 3 Roberts’s Journal. 
